THE BOOK Questions and Answers
So, I haven't been too active lately. There's a reason for that. In about a week, I've got an all-day commitment that begins at 9 AM. So... why is this taking a lot of my attention. Well, three weeks ago I was completely nocturnal and woke up at about 5 PM every day (which is why I usually upload at like 3 in the morning). So, I've been progressively waking up earlier and that's been keeping me in a bit of a fatigued haze from time to time. But let's ignore that, I want to talk about the Growing Around novel, and some questions that might arise. Question #1: What's going to happen when the book is done? Perhaps the question that most people asked and wanted the answer to. I am going to publish it. Self-publish it. In the age of the internet it's really easy to do this. I do believe that Amazon even has a service that will allow you to do this. Amazon's got everything, even a service that seems to be trying to compete with YouTube. I plan to make it both an ebook and a physical book. The cover will be done by Question #2: Why self-publishing? Isn't that a bad thing? It can be, and for first-time authors I would not recommend it. When you self-publish, what happens is you basically ask a company to just... make the physical book. And you do literally everything else. You do the copy-editing. You do the promotion. You make the cover. On the flip side, you get to keep all of the rights to the book, the money not used to make/distribute the book, and the book can be literally whatever you want it to be. Which is... a double-edged sword to be honest. When you give a work to a publisher, it's their job to help it find a market and get it out there. I'm largely self-publishing because I already have an audience. To put things in perspective, a first-time author going through the traditional publishing route would be lucky to achieve 5,000 sales. Speaking pragmatically, on YouTube alone, I have 200,000 potential sales at present. Even if one half of one percent bought the book, I would double the industry average. Question #3: Will it Cost Money? Unfortunately, yes. And when the book is done, everything except the sample chapter of the second draft will probably go away. Let me... explain this the best I can. One thing that I've debated for when it came to Growing Around is crowd funding. You know, Kickstarter, IndieGogo, and all of that. After all, it's helped a lot of people achieve their dream projects, like Shovel Knight or the AVGN movie. The problem? I never really trusted myself. I had a hard time getting things out there without the pressure of backers, and if I failed to get the product out there, there would be so much more to lose, the pressure would be on us to hurry up more, and we might get out a subpar product. The second draft of the first chapter of the novel is the best-thing GA that I've posted, and it took me over two years to get to what this world should look like, and how it should act. So, I'm planning on using the funds from the novel to start up other Growing Around related things - graphic novels, merchandise, animations, video games, etc. That way, if nothing ever pans out, there won't be any betrayal, you know? The people are paying for the book, not the promises of everything to come. 'Question #4: When do you expect the final draft done? '''My deadline in November 1st. It's a personal deadline, not a promise. There's no contract or anything. That's just when it's promised. If it gets past this and I'm still not finished, I'll probably feel sad about it. And if I get it finished by then, I'll feel happy about it. '''Question #5: How Different will future drafts be from the first? '''It'll be the same basic stories of Sally wanting to be mayor, Linda struggling with her past, and Timmy struggling with the future, but things will be turned flipped upside down in some aspects. In the second draft for instance, I had Kathy and Timmy spark their relationship in chapter 2 instead of 17 (this was to give her an "excuse" to stay around for most of the book.) Most of the changes won't be in the story. It's just got a lot of fiddling and moving things around. the same pieces will be there - Party Duty, getting Gumdrops, Sally facing off with Talula, Kidependence Day, etc. Characters will change, but only when they have to. Making Lucas more consistent, making Sally less of an ass, etc. Most of the changes are definitely about the world - making it more detached from our reality and more cohesive. In the first draft for instance, the house was basically a real-world house with some scribbles on the wall. In the future drafts, the house has a spiral slide from the second floor hall to the kitchen; the railing is in the shape of a dragon; there's a ball pit in the living room; Sally has a tree house in her room; etc. It's like a house if kids could design any house that they wanted... like it should be. '''Question #6: Why Are You Rewriting it? I thought the first draft was good. '''Yeah, but I didn't. Okay, the first draft was okay, but as I myself pointed out, it was filled with a lot of problems. The basic point is that it's not as good as it could have been, and I do want to ultimately release the best possible product that I can. And no one gets it right on the first draft. Trust me, if you think you did, you're probably wrong. Get someone else to look at it. As for my own work, there are problems that I personally can't see past. You know how I can be overly critical and nitpicky at everything? Well, that doesn't turn off for my own creative work (unless it's what I'm currently working on, and it takes a lot of effort to turn it off in that case. And you've gotta turn it off or you'll never get what you're working on done). '''Question #7: Will you write sequels to the book? '''Absolutely. I've got a lot of plans for future books. Things that couldn't be done in a short cartoon. At the very least, ''Opposite Day can be expanded into a full fledged novel. Or it can be expanded into a graphic novel side story. But there are definitely some big, high-concept ideas that I want to take full advantage of. 'Question #8: How do the books relate to the future animations/graphic novels? '''For now, I'm going to say that the book is its own continuity. Most of the things in the book is planned to be in the actual series, but they happen in slightly different ways. But I really don't want to get too deep into this before the series has even really started, you know? '''Question #9: Why are you so passionate about this one, of all things? '''There's not enough space to go about it here. But after I'm done with the book, I'm probably going to create a "making of" video that I'll put on my vlog channel where I'll go into detail. There are a lot of reasons. Some of it is pragmatic "this is the furthest that I've ever gotten, so it's this or nothing" and "this is the most realized thing that you have." Some are a little personal. Trying to make this into a project has caused me to meet some of the best friends that I've ever had. And some are very personal. I've figured out one of the deeper reasons that I tend to write only for children/child characters. Last time I answered this question saying that it was some kind of nostalgia, and that's definitely true. But another reason is that it's very unlikely that I personally will have children - the reasons which I've gone into in the past. And both the work and the characters within it kind of fill that void; this one more than anything. It's one of the reasons that I really like to write child characters, and child characters in very fantastical scenarios. But I'll go into that a lot deeper when I make that "making of" video, and how each of the characters relate to me personally. ~~~ Welp, good night everyone. Tomorrow I've got to wake up at noon, take a 2 mile bike ride, work on the Dorbees review, try to make a ''1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die (still waiting on that updated version) that isn't an insult to the medium because I am obsessive at hell, and of course, continue rewriting this book. I might even get some food in there somewhere. Category:Miscellaneous